Singer and TV star "Akiko" Wada has announced his intention to finally undergo a sex change operation. While not a first for stars regularly seen on television here (Yoshimoto's Masami Yamasaki had an addadictomy in 1997 to become Housei Yamasaki, altough it is believed the testicular transplant never took), this may well be the first time a man is to undertake a full lopitoffomy and continue to appear in the same guise as before.
"It's a natural step for me," said Wada in a recent interview. "I've been dressing like a woman for many years now, and we're hoping the operation will finally bring my voice up to a more feminine pitch and get rid of the permanent hang-dog expression."
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Japan's Foreign Minister proposed some changes to the Nobel Prize lineup during an interview with the press in Washington recently. The wily LDP stalwart began the conference with a warning against rising nationalism in Korea and China.
"China and Korea are treading the fine line between patriotism, which is love for Japan, and nationalism, which leads to being colonised by Japan. They would do well to sort out the difference before we revoke our war-denouncing constitution and unveil our nuclear arsenal."
Aso initially proposed a Nobel Prize for Manga, or Japanese comics.
"This is a logical addition to the Nobel Prize categories," the minister explained, "because manga was invented in Japan and non-Japanese would not be eligible for the prize."
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Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, nicknamed TomKat by the media, have given birth to a 7 pound 7 ounce, 20 inch long baby nose. The sex-crazed Scientology fanatics have been going steady for about a year, and the birth of their first nose, named "Suri", has been protected under the cult's "Silent" procedure. The name Suri means either "princess" or "great big fucking enormous hulking honker" according to a TomKat spokesman who wasn't too sure which.
"Tom and Katie joyously welcome the arrival of the nose," he said in a statement, "and both mother and nose are doing well."
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Music shops around the country have reported high sales of Puccini's opera ever since Shizuka Arakawa skated her way to the gold medal to a Violin Fantasy of Turandot at the Turin Olympics. Fans flooded CD stores to add the music to their collection, many returning instead with full versions of the opera, buying on title alone.
"I don't care," beamed fan Mami Sasaki, 14, clutching a two CD set featuring Jussi Bjoerling, Birgit Nilsson and Renata Tebaldi as Liu. "I got the music, I ordered the earrings, and I'm practicing my Ina Bauer everyday in front of the mirror. Pretty soon I'm going to be Arakawa."
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Oscar winners are already practicing their acceptance speeches, according to Hollywood insider Rudi Rosenbaum. The 78th Academy Awards, due to get underway Sunday, promise to be the biggest yet, and will test actors' abilities to perform rehearsed speeches in an impromptu manner. Along with speeches expressing incredulity, winning actors and actresses are also rehearsing their looks of surprise for when their names are announced.
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, composer, turned 250 on January 27. This makes him very old indeed. Known as one of the great composers, Mozart is famous for his symphonies, operas, piano music and choral works. Many people remember him for his work on the soundtrack of Amadeus, a 1984 film starring F Murray Abraham and Tom Cruise. This was probably Mozart's greatest commercial success, though purists continue to prefer the music of his earlier, "classical" period.
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Romano Mussolini, son of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, has died at the age of 78. He was hospitalised for kidney problems two weeks ago. Romano was well known as a jazz musician, helping popularise the genre in post war Italy. He also boofed Sofia Loren's sister, a starfuck worthy of any boaster's little black book.
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Ever wondered where the plastic food displays outside of restaurants come from? Take a walk down Kappabashi Douri and you can see rows of specialist shops, all making food displays to order for sushi bars and restaurants around the country. The displays have become as much a part of the Japanese eating out culture as looking at the menu. Customers can see what they are ordering without having to wade through wordy descriptions or wonder how their dish will appear when it comes.
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Word on the Tokyo streets has it that foppish asian fruitcake 37-year old SMAP heartthrob teen idol pop sensation Kimura Takuya has resolved, in an exclusive interview with The Rising Sun-Times, to continue publicly suppressing his potentially economy-crippling homosexuality by avowing to persist with his sham marriage to catnip-countenanced washed-up pop starlet Shiruka Kudos. An insider from the English conversation school where the bulimic brunette brand handbag hag Kudos takes classes on Tuesday afternoons has been cited as the source for this salacious story.
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Japan's Queen of subtitles, the woman with the words, the Fellini of phrasing, the Siren of screenplay, the East's answer to Shakespeare, she's been called all these things and many more. I refer, of course, to Natsuko Toda, Japan's ubiquitous and seemingly only subtitler.

It's a pleasure to speak to you, Ms Toda.
Yes, isn't it.

How did you first get into subtitling?
*Sigh* Look, a lot of people assume it was easy, but it was very hard. My husband and I started the business about 35 years ago, and I have to emphasise that it took a lot of hard work and gumption.

What was the first movie you provided subtitles for?
Ah yes, it was so much easier in those days... before all this weirdness... it was Roman Holiday, which we translated as "Vacation in Sapporo". We have to make these movies palatable to the Japanese sensibility, you see, which is quite unique.
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Notable gadfly and generally megalomaniacal fat cunt hows-your-father Horie has declared, by personal decree, that he is ready to join fag boy-band "Smap."
"I am bored shitless" the curdled whey-faced InterNet tycoon Horie stated to a media throng assembled outside his sprawling 4-LDK Shinjuku Mansion House Estate today. However, when grilled by one particularly dashing, dapper, roguishly lantern-jawed reporter (sporting a black and gold lame' 100-yen shop wrestling mask) whether this announcement was merely the latest in a long line of sad, retroactively-triggered subliminal revenge attempts unconsciously aimed at gaining a measure of self-satisfying revenge on all the cool kids at school (particularly the girls) who had teased him so mercilessly for being not only a fat cunt but also a smart-arse know-it-all twat, Horie paused and, looking downcast, his bottom lip quivering, smiled the sadly wry smile of the sprung. With wounded eyes he looked at the limping yet piercingly, no, corrosively handsome reporter and stammered "yyes, yes, I suppose you're right, Mr Bottersfly."
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Pop diva Hikaru Utada has announced her intention of launching a debut album in the U.S. The perennially popular R&B singer has released a string of albums in Japan to great acclaim but has yet to break into the notoriously difficult U.S. market. The new album, to be titled simply 'Debut', promises to secure her place in the international pop firmament as a bright and shining star.
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Pop diva Ayumi Hamasaki has denied allegations that she is a "bug-eyed slug-nosed hare-lipped slack-arsed bow-legged talentless midget female Marty Feldman with his face smashed in by a shovel", published in an online newspaper yesterday. "The allegations are completely untrue," said a spokesman from Avex, Hamasaki's production company. "We deny them outright and will have them removed from the site immediately."
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Cadet reporter Thomas Bottersfly hit the yellow brick road to search out Japan's own singer without a heart or brain but with plenty of courage. His experience was a little unexpected...
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Taito Corporation announced today that they will update their popular arcade game "Densha de GO!" to include lists of fatalities and injured in view of Monday's train accident in Hyogo prefecture. The popular train simulation game is a favorite of Japan's innumerable nerd class, and presents a realistic train driver experience through a selection of Japan's railway lines. Considered accurate to the last detail, fans had long complained about the lack of screaming voices and the inability to see the human toll during accidents.
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For fifty years, Seishiro Ishiwatari, 71, woke up at 5 a.m. and made the twenty metre walk to his studio in Yokohama's Totsuka ward. Before the apprentices arrived in the morning, he would sip hot tea and plan the day's work. He would start by cleaning the work benches, then arrange the chisels in alphabetical order, and finish by writing the day's schedule on the chalkboard. This attention to detail and insistence on hand crafting each individual work is what set Ishiwatari apart from other mosaic studios, and what has ultimately forced him to hang up his hammer.
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